(M140) Then followed the noble reign of Josiah—the last independent king of Judah—whose piety and zeal in destroying idolatry, and great reforms, have made him the most memorable of all the successors of David. He repaired the temple, and utterly destroyed every vestige of idolatry, assisted by the high priest Hilkiah, who seems to have been his prime minister. He kept the great feast of the passover with more grandeur than had ever been known, either in the days of the judges, or of the kings, his ancestors; nor did any king ever equal him in his fidelity to the laws of Moses. But notwithstanding all his piety and zeal, God was not to be turned from chastising Judah for the sins of Manasseh, and the repeated idolatries of his people; and all that Josiah could secure was a promise from the Lord that the calamities of his country should not happen in his day. (M141) In the thirty-first year of his reign, Necho, the king of Egypt, made war against the king of Babylon, who had now established his empire on the banks of the Euphrates, over the ruins of the old Assyrian monarchy. Josiah rashly embarked in the contest, either with a view of giving his aid to the king of Babylon, or to prevent the march of Necho, which lay through the great plain of Esdrælon. Josiah, heedless of all warnings, ventured in person against the Egyptian army, though in disguise, and was slain by an arrow. His dead body was brought to Jerusalem, and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers; and all Judah and Israel mourned for the loss of one of the greatest, and certainly the best of their kings. The prophet Jeremiah pronounced his eulogy, and led the lamentations of the people for this great calamity, B.C. 608. (M142) The people proclaimed one of his sons, Shallum, to be king, under the name of Jehoahaz, but the Egyptian conqueror deposed him and set up his brother Jehoiakim as a tributary vassal. He reigned ingloriously for eleven years—an idolator and a tyrant.